“Something in the Water”: Awesome or Horrible?

I love finding out hit songwriters don’t always know when their ideas are brilliant. So when Carrie Underwood revealed some of what went on behind the scenes of her “Something in the Water,” this was my favorite part:

“Chris (DeStefano) had this music track that he’d been working on at home,” Underwood explains in this video on People.com. “He came in and was like, ‘It’s either awesome, or it’s horrible and you’re going to hate it.’”

Obviously, it was awesome.

Underwood goes on to talk about what happened next.

“Whenever you go into a writing session, for me, I really like not having too much of an agenda,” she said. “I always keep a little notebook of ideas that I’ll draw from. Or not. It kind of depends on what the vibe is for the day.”

After DeStefano played the music, she and co-writer Brett James instantly loved, she says she threw her two cents in.

“I started flipping through my pages, and I was like, ‘Well, I have this title called ‘Something in the Water,’” she recalled.

As for the choir on the recording, Underwood says the idea came to them after the song was finished.

“The whole choir part actually didn’t come into play until we were pretty much done with the song, and we were talking about how cool it would be if there was some old hymn,” she said.

The result is, obviously, one of Underwood’s biggest songs and one that could not have come at a better time.

“I think it’s really special,” she said. “And I think it’s the perfect way to mark 10 years … being as lucky as I have been and blessed as I have been being able to do what I do.”